Writes Joshua Micah Marshall: "Maybe Richard Clarke lied in the July 2002 testimony. Maybe he's an al Qaida mole. Maybe instead of being 98% water like the rest of us he's 98% wax. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe ...A few hours after accusing Clarke of perjury, [Frist] admits that he has no idea -- not just no idea whether he perjured himself, which is a fairly technical question, but no idea whether there were any inconsistencies [in Clarke's story] at all. He was just running it up the flag pole." So that's the only defense Bush can offer? Running wild accusations 'up the flagpole"? Seems the policy of Busheviks like Frist consists of alternating lies and wild accusations. America deserves far, far better!

The Hill reports: "Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-Tenn.) top aide on judicial nominees is expected to announce his resignation at the end of this week -- a sacrifice offered by the GOP leadership in hope of persuading the Democrats to wind down the fight over leaked Judiciary Committee memos. The aide, Manuel Miranda, had spearheaded the Republican effort to push President Bush's judicial nominees through the Senate in the face of fierce Democratic opposition. Miranda declined a request for comment. But The Hill has learned that he agreed to resign under pressure from Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). The Democrats have not agreed to scale back their demands for wide-ranging punishments following a full-blown leak inquiry... The aide's departure signals that Senate Republican leaders will likely pull back from confrontation over Bush's judges. Last year's high-intensity battles included a GOP-staged 40-hour marathon debate on blocked nominees."

Bill Frist may have found a fall guy to take the heat in an investigation of Watergate-style espionage -- Manuel Miranda. Miranda "has been identified as one of the Republican staffers who may have taken advantage of a computer system glitch to access private communication between ranking Democrats for more than a year. [glitch? Last time we looked they still called it HACKING]. According to the Boston Globe, GOP staff members viewed hundreds of memos, talking points and accounts of private meetings without the knowledge of the Democratic authors... The information was supposed to be protected by a password, but a computer technician working on the shared server shortly after the Democratic takeover of the Senate in 2001[accidentally on purpose!] failed to set up the proper protection."

Jonathan Cohn writes for the New Republic: "But, while Frist may understand medicine, that doesn't mean he's the best person to craft health policy. Ironically, his experience as a transplant surgeon--an experience markedly different than, say, a pediatrician's--has reinforced policy notions that could make our health care system, already cruelly insensitive to the uninsured and the underinsured, even harsher. Moreover, he seems to have inherited from his family, which founded one of the nation's largest for-profit health care companies, a tendency to see the market as the solution to most problems, even as the ways the market distorts health care--everything from drug companies pushing unnecessary medications to insurance companies neglecting beneficiaries--are growing ever more evident."

Doug Ireland writes, "While TV gushed last week over the Republicans' new Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, intervening in a traffic accident, portraying the former heart surgeon as a 'Good Samaritan,' in truth the GOP has simply replaced a racist with a corporate crook. Frist was born rich, and got richer - thanks to massive criminal fraud by the family business. The basis of the Frist family fortune is HCA Inc. (Hospital Corporation of America), the largest for-profit hospital chain in the country, which was founded by Frist's father and brother. And, just as Karl Rove was engineering the scuttling of Trent Lott and the elevation of Frist, the Bush Justice Department suddenly ended a near-decadelong federal investigation into how HCA for years had defrauded Medicaid, Medicare and Tricare (the federal program that covers the military and their families), giving the greedy health-care behemoth's executives a sweetheart settlement that kept them out of the can."

"Fristy the surgeon Was elected on the phone. With a White House boost got the Leader post. Will he throw Trent Lott a bone? "Fristy the surgeon Made a mint from HCA. Rarely casts his vote for the common folk. Wants to be the Prez some day." Enjoy Mad Kane's latest song parody.

Bill Frist votes to outlaw 99.5% of abortions, good enough to earn him a 100% voting record from the National Right to Life Committee - and 0% from Planned Parenthood and NARAL. But Frist owns at least $5 million worth of HCA, a for-profit hospital chain that provides abortions, thus fattening Frist's own wallet, and that of his brother, HCA's CEO. Human Events, a right-wing rag, tried to get some clarity on the topic from Frist's office, but ran into a wall of obfuscation. Tell us the truth, Frisky Frist!

Senator Bill Frist detailed his positions on national issues in the 2000 Congressional National Political Awareness Test, an outstanding service provided by Project Vote Smart. From Abortion to Welfare, you can see exactly where Bill Frist stands - when he's not waffling, of course. On affirmative action, for example, Frist certainly doesn't support it - but he doesn't oppose it either. On abortion, Frist is against it, except in cases of rape and incest and when the life of the woman is endangered. But Frist led the fight to outlaw "partial birth" abortions - the very procedure that is used to save the lives of women whose wanted pregnancies become life-threatening in the third trimester. With such slippery views, we're going to start calling him "Frisky Frist".

"Democrats who were on the receiving end of [Frist's] 1994 campaign do not share the smooth and heroic image of Mr. Frist that made him such a compelling alternative to Mr. Lott. Doug Heyl, who was [Senator Jim] Sasser's campaign manager, recalls Mr. Frist's 1994 campaign as 'a classic anti-Washington campaign with the great Southern code words built in,' including allusions to Mr. Sasser sending taxpayers' money to Washington, home of Marion S. Barry, the scandal-ridden black mayor... Frist also asserted at the time that 'for the past 18 years, Jim Sasser has been transplanting your wallets and your pocketbooks to Washington, D.C.' His campaign commercials featured the song 'The Ballad of Liberal, Taxing, Two-Faced Jim,' which included the lyric 'You ran up a tab, sent us a bill,/ If the taxes don't get us, the criminals will.' He defeated Mr. Sasser by 14%, and was easily re-elected six years later. Mr. Heyl said: 'It says a lot about you. What will you do to win?'"

"To Senate Republicans: Senate Republicans have quickly rallied around Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) to replace Trent Lott. But Frist's record is even worse than Lott's. Obstructing Voting by Blacks... Opposing Crucial Civil Rights... Denying Justice to Vaccine Victims... Protecting Eli Lilly from Thimerosal Lawsuits... Getting Rich on Medical Fraud... Stealing and Killing Pet Cats. Senator Bill Frist is unfit to be the Majority Leader of the United States Senate. We call upon Republican Senators to oppose Bill Frist." Sign the petition!

In the summer of 2002, Bill Frist introduced S 2053. According to Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education (PROVE), "This bill would amend the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in a way that would completely shield a drug company from liability for vaccine injuries. The hurdles parents have had to jump over which currently shield manufacturers have been high enough There are many bad provisions to this bill, and they are outlined below, but the most problematic one will stop the ability of a vaccine injury victim to bring a lawsuit in civil court." Frist used to kill cats - now he's helping drug companies kill children. We demand thorough coverage of Frist's abysmal Senate record by the media!

Boston Globe reports, "Frist is an animal lover who said his decision to become a doctor was clinched when he helped heal a friend's dog. But Frist now found himself forced to kill animals during medical research. And his new dilemma was finding enough animals to kill. Soon, he began lying to obtain more animals. He went to the animal shelters around Boston and promised he would care for the cats as pets. Then he killed them during experiments. 'It was a heinous and dishonest thing to do,' Frist wrote [in his 1989 biography "Transplant"]. 'I was going a little crazy.'" Can a self-proclaimed "animal lover" who steals and kills pets be trusted to run the United States Senate? If he can repeatedly lie about caring for pets, then killing them, can we believe ANYTHING he says?

DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe says, "There were many disgraceful incidents of minority voter intimidation in the '02 elections, particularly in the Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and New Jersey Senate campaigns. It is disturbing that the Senator who ran these races as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Bill Frist, is now a leading candidate for Senate majority leader. What did Senator Frist know about flyers distributed in Louisiana's African American communities encouraging voters to cast their ballot 'on Tuesday, December 10th' - five days after the December 5th run-off? Did the NRSC direct the Louisiana Republican Party to pay African-American youth $75 to hold signs in black neighborhoods that read 'Mary, if you don't respect us, don't expect us?' Was it part of the NRSC's ground game to have paid employees of Sen. Tim Hutchinson (R-AR) intimidate African American voters at early-voting polling locations?" Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) demanded a Justice Dept. investigation.

The Austin American Statesman reports that Frist "has been mentioned as a suspect in the mysterious insertion of a provision in the Homeland Security Bill that would protect Eli Lilly from lawsuits over a preservative in vaccines. The rider forces lawsuits over thimerosal, the preservative developed by Lilly, into a special 'vaccine court.' It could thwart thousands of lawsuits filed by parents who believe that the mercury in thimerosal caused autism and other neurological ailments in their children. Frist has introduced a similar amendment in other legislation, but it was defeated in the Senate. However, with no one claiming authorship, the provision ended up in the final Homeland Security legislation that Bush signed into law. Frist has denied that he had anything to do with adding the provision." We demand the truth!

"'Trent Lott made the right decision to step down as Senate Majority Leader,' said National Organization for Women (NOW) President Kim Gandy. 'But if he thinks that stepping down will save his party more embarrassment, he couldn't be more wrong - especially if his successor is Bill Frist. Few senators have a worse voting record on civil rights than Trent Lott - but Bill Frist is one of them,' Gandy noted. 'Frist has voted against sex education, international family planning, emergency contraception (the morning-after pill), affirmative action, hate crimes legislation and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. This is the man who is supposed to save face for the GOP in the Senate? Think again... Karl Rove, credited by insiders with engineering the exchange of Lott for Frist, will be the de facto Senate leader - and the idea of the U.S. Senate being run from the White House ought to give every Senator pause,' Gandy said."

Nathan Newman writes, "Frist is literally the child of corporate medical fraud and union-busting. While he bills himself as a heart surgeon, his relevant position was as member of the family which founded what became the massive HCA/Columbia health care hospital chain. Bill Frist's personal stake in the family fortune is unknown exactly (in the tens of millions), but his brother's share according to Forbes is $950 million... And how did HCA/Columbia get rich? Raiding nonprofit hospitals, dumping the poor previously served and turning them into profit mills for the family bottom line. Oh yeah, and massive fraud against the Medicare system, a fact that led to a $745 million criminal fine against the company back in 2000. What was the nature of the fraud? The worst possible in corrupting the patient-client relationship to the point of endangering lives. Marc Gardner was a vice-president at HCA/Columbia where he says he 'committed felonies every day.'"

The for-profit corporate medical system has driven health care costs into outer space, and subjected patients to the torture of unnecessary surgery and devastating drugs. But Senator Bill Frist's "father and brother helped found what became HCA, the nation's largest hospital company, which is the focus of a long-running government inquiry into accusations of health care fraud. On Wednesday, HCA said it had reached a settlement of more than $880 million with the Justice Department. The accord calls for HCA to pay $630 million after agreeing previously to pay $250 million. Mr. Frist has long said that all his holdings were in a blind trust, although his opponents over the years have painted him as too sympathetic toward the health care industry" - in other words, a whore for the powerful medical-industrial complex. And despite his less than Neanderthal appearance, NARAL says Frist is "very much an anti-choice member of Congress."